Boko Haram attack: children among villagers burned to death in Nigeria

At least 85 people were killed in a weekend attack by Boko Haram insurgents in a village near the restive north-east Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a state commissioner said on Monday.

Boko Haram has been attacking soft targets, increasingly with suicide bombers, since the military drove them out of towns and villages in northeast Nigeria a year ago.

Nigerian Army spokesman, Col. Mustapha Anka said the terrorists arrived “in two cars and on motorcycles” and without warning “opened fire then set light to homes”.

“Also, while people were running for their dear lives to Gomari Kerkeri village, three female suicide bombers attempted to make their way into the crowd but were intercepted and subsequently blown up”.

Dalori is near the largest camp for people displaced by Boko Haram violence.

A rescue worker, who participated in the evacuation of the victims, said 50 corpses were taken to the Borno State Specialist Hospital in Maiduguri and 15 others corpses deposited at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. “Many people ran to the bush including myself”, he said. Officials said they killed only themselves and wounded some students. Such attacks on undefended villages across northeastern Nigeria have become common for Boko Haram, as a way to show up the military for its inability to fend them off. On Sunday afternoon, Mohammed Kanar, area co-ordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency, said, at that time, 86 bodies had been collected. When we returned the next morning the whole village had been razed.

Some residents fled into the bush and watched as attackers torched their homes Saturday night.

Boko Haram also carried out for deadly bomb attacks in neighbouring Chad yesterday.

Fr Alumuku explains that since it started losing control of territory thanks to intensified military action and a new strategy, Boko Haram has reverted to hit-and-run attacks on villages as well as suicide bombings on places of worship or markets. Weeping, he said the carnage lasted for four hours, and that several of his family members were killed or wounded. He said: ‘I lost an uncle in the attack. An official who did not wish to be named said identifying some bodies proved impossible.

The state is the heartland of the seven-year insurgency that seeks to establish an Islamist state.

“There is a real bias against media coverage of terrorist attacks in Africa, and especially in Nigeria”, Max Abrahms, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, told RT.